Virga – Saturday at sunset

By Sunday June 3, 2007

Virga is precipitation that falls from clouds but evaporates in dry air beneath the cloud before reaching the ground.

Click on photo for larger image

And when the sun is setting behind you – at 6500’altitude on a Saturday evening – it’s worth recording.



10 Comments
  1. KVolk says:
    6/3/2007 at 6:56 am

    Great picture!!….really captures some of the special qualities of N NM.

  2. BubbaRay says:
    6/3/2007 at 8:39 am

    Eideard, that new memory for your camera works great. Flying through stuff like that is pretty neat, you can see dry ground, but the plane gets a nice wash. We see that kind of weather a lot in TX, especially the hill country and W TX at 4,000 elev.

    Here’s one of the weirdest virga photos I can remember, looks like a sci-fi movie:

    http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=47776

  3. JimR says:
    6/3/2007 at 8:39 am

    Gorgeous Ideard! As an aside observation, and I hope I don’t ruin the picture for you, but the lower third of the cloud looks to me like the Hindenburg as it is catching fire.

  4. John Paradox says:
    6/3/2007 at 8:55 am

    Here in S.AZ we get to see this occasionally over the mountains.

    JimR – looks to me like the ships coming in in the movie Independence Day.

    J/P=?

  5. hhopper says:
    6/3/2007 at 9:39 am

    Really great sky.

  6. Eideard says:
    6/3/2007 at 9:56 am

    BubbaRay – outrageous NOAA image.

    BTW – no easy perspective; but, actually the virga is falling on the southern end of Runway 2-20 at the SF Municipal Airport. Watch out for downbursts!

  7. JimR says:
    6/3/2007 at 10:43 am

    J/P… they’re stratocatastrophicumulus clouds. 😉

  8. joshua says:
    6/3/2007 at 2:18 pm

    Really great shot Eideard. And Jim is right, it really does look like the Hindenburg just as it blew.

    We get to see this now and then when we go up to the Prescott area, around 4500 to 5000 ft mark.

  9. BubbaRay says:
    6/4/2007 at 2:02 am

    #6, Eideard, I’ve only flown in to the beautiful city of Santa Fe once, a sort of emergency landing on the way to Albuquerque in the middle of a bad snowstorm. A local car dealer close to the airport actually lent us a car, as he knew we would be there for two days. What a great city !!

  10. Elwood Pleebus says:
    6/4/2007 at 8:54 am

    Very nice shot. Thank you for sharing that. It’s amazing what water droplets and sunshine can do!


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